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LONG BLOG

Super Mario what? Castlevani-huh? N6-for what?
As my terrible wordplay above demonstrates, I'm relatively new to gaming compared to most people, as I perceive it, on this website. My first console was in fact the Game boy colour, the special Pokémon edition which I still treasure to this day, along with Pokémon crystal version.

Not my photo, but I don't have the box anymore :(

Before that, my only living memory of a videogame happens to be the DOS game, 'Star-goose', in which you play as a goose flying through space, shooting robots. To this day I have a copy somewhere on my hard-drive, as for some reason that galactic goose means something special to me; not only was is the genesis of my interest in games, but it also happens to be one of the few clear memories of my very early childhood.

But enough about geese. I recently looked back on my copy of 'Pokémon crystal' and realised just how crap my 6 year-old self was at catching 'em all. Not only did I have very few Pokémon, but they were all low level, besides the one I had started with. Ashamed of my younger self's tactical choices I started again, and with this I suddenly began to remember most, if not all of the beginning of the game. Perhaps the most significant moment was when the Prof. asked me about 'daylight savings time'. At the age of 6, I had no idea what this meant, and much the same can probably be said for the rest of the game. And so, is it possible to say I loved videogames at this age?

Damn the rats!

I call to the stand 'Harry Potter and the philosopher's stone', an open world game in which you play as Harry Potter and battle in much the same way as in Pokémon. This was the game I believe got me to truly love and enjoy games. Whilst I am unsure as to whether I understood the mechanics of Pokémon, my old save file on The Philosopher's stone says otherwise. Around 10 years ago I managed to find myself stuck on a fetch quest, no less, for Professor Snape. Even today, I simply cannot defeat the enemies with my current skill-set, and so my Harry Potter for now remains frozen but a few hours into the game. Perhaps my nostalgia overcomes me when thinking about this game, and so I won't give it a score, but I can safely say it is better than every single one of the HP games on PS2, all through every single game of this generation.

And so, despite my love of The philosopher's stone and Pokémon, I cannot truly say I've ever 'loved' games as a medium much in the same way as others on this site might. I've never had much of a commitment to games. Perhaps I'm splitting hairs, but throughout each generation there have been certain games which I remember fondly, and so many others I look back on with apathy. My second console was the Playstation 2 (although it was very nearly a Gamecube), and my first game was 'Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex'. Yet again, this (at least at the time) was a stellar game, and that generation had another few stand out titles like 'The Simpsons: Hit & run', which remains the best licensed game I have ever played, but still I find myself forgetting any other supposed 'classics' like the three GTA games released on the platform, although I still go back and revisit Vice city sometimes.

With this generation coming to an end, I recently looked back at my favourite games throughout, and the list permeated far further throughout the life cycle than any other. 'Fallout', 'LittleBigPlanet', 'Metal Gear Solid 4', 'LA Noire', 'Heavy Rain', 'Bioshock' 1-3, 'Batman: Arkham's, 'Uncharted', 'Resistance', 'Mirror's edge', 'Bad company 2' and 'inFamous'. All of these games I can list off of the top of my head and yet there are still many more to be mentioned. Whilst many tend to look back on the older generations with fond memories, I can't help but ask why, besides for nostalgia. No single other generation or console has given me such joy as my 80GB PS3 from December 2008 (funny story here; I turned down a free PS3 and bought a Wii instead in 2007). I've replayed 'LA Noire' about 3 or 4 times now, I'm still finding stuff in New Vegas and the twists in 'Bioshock' amaze me every time (even 'Bioshock 2', which seems to get a lot of hate).
So I can say without a doubt I only began to love video-games in 2008. I could go over the negatives of this generation that everyone loves to complain about, and outrightly claim the retro consoles trump modern ones, but instead I'll ignore the online passes and modern shooters (although 'Bad company 2' was fantastic) and focus on what made this generation the best: the new IP.

Let me know in the comments which generation was your favourite...

Oh, and some comments on my writing would be great, this is my first blog!